Re:Zero – Starting Life in Another World – Vol. 12 Ch. 2

Re:Zero – Starting Life in Another World. Volume. 12.

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‘Chapter 2:- I’VE ALREADY SEEN HELL.’

 

 
Sub-chapter 1.

“So that is how Lady Emilia returned with Crybaby Barusu in tow…”

“Somehow, that sounds like the title of a fairy tale or something…”

Subaru had bawled his eyes out, and Emilia had consoled him. The time of warmth and being pathetic had come to an end.

When their legs brought them out of the tomb, Ram was there to greet them, and having listened to the circumstances, she made the aforementioned kind words. Unfortunately, Subaru, well aware of how pathetic he was, had no mental energy left with which to refute her.

“After having raced inside in such dramatic fashion, he faints just like he did during the day, causing trouble to the Lady Emilia he was supposed to save… Why are you alive exactly?”

“I said I have no mental energy; that’s not a reason to come after me even more, you know?!”

“That’s right, Ram. Subaru was worried about me. Those feelings are precious.”

Ram, unable to conceal her scorn, emitted a heavy sigh as her shoulders fell. When Subaru lodged an objection about her demeanor, Emilia, completely recovered, offered him reassuring support.

Emilia stood at Subaru’s side, angling her refined eyebrows in a dignified manner as she continued.

“Though given that he went out of his way to help me, it is really disappointing that he ended up collapsing all of a sudden and broke down crying from worry after—”

“Emilia-tan? Emilia-tan? I’m going to cry all over again.”

“But—! Lately, Subaru’s done nothing but help me…so a part of me is relieved that Subaru showed me his weak side like that…”

Touching a hand to her chest, Emilia’s words caused Subaru to unwittingly catch his breath.

Emilia had an overinflated view of Subaru’s worth. Up to that point, Subaru had showed her his pathetic side on more than one occasion—this time was only the latest example in the long list of embarrassing moments since they had first met.

“I’m both happy and embarrassed to hear you say that, Emilia-tan, but I don’t really want to show you stuff like that much…”

“Eh, why not?”

“That’s because I always want to show Emilia-tan my cool side. I want you to forget that I’m really a weak, pathetic, totally unsalvageable guy.”

“Sheesh. I won’t hate you just because you show me a few moments of weakness, Subaru.”

Emilia put her hands on her hips, cheeks puffing up in indignation. Subaru tried his best to smile to gloss things over.

Emilia’s words were kind, but Subaru’s vanity didn’t let him gain any comfort from them. His displeasure was completely unrelated to Emilia’s personality and it certainly wasn’t because he was worried about disappointing her—this was simply Subaru’s stubbornness talking.

“Ha! Aren’t you full of yourself? Seeing you act this pigheaded makes it difficult to believe you are fresh from bawling your eyes out.”

“And there Big Sis goes pouring cold water on right when things were going nicely…”

“Now, now, do not say that, Mr. Natsuki. Miss Ram’s demeanor belies her concern. When she had no idea what was occurring inside, Miss Ram was particularly worried out of… Hiii!”

Otto looked quite pleased with himself, but one cross look from Ram instantly made it fade away. No way she’s seriously acting sour because of an adorable reason like that, thought Subaru as he squinted at Ram.

“What?”

“…No, ah, nothing at all.”

But her sharp glare made him beat a hasty retreat as well. Unlike Otto, the damage to him was light because he was more accustomed to facing off against Ram. Either way, Ram and Otto had been there to warmly greet Subaru and Emilia upon their return. That being the case, the remaining issue became quite simple—

“”

His averted gaze fell upon a golden-haired youth standing nearby with his arms folded—Garfiel. The sight made Subaru’s cheeks harden, and he strove to conceal his emotions behind them.

Subaru’s feelings toward Garfiel were exceptionally conflicted. It was a fact that he had temporarily cooperated with Subaru in the battle against the Witch. The memory of his gruesome death was still burned on the back of Subaru’s eyelids. And so Subaru accepted that fact.

—But he also remembered the great many he had cruelly killed in the world prior to that.

That was the reason Subaru couldn’t lower his guard. Especially not right after a Return by Death. The reason for Garfiel’s hostility, the Witch’s miasma, would currently be at its thickest.

How would he move? With Subaru under that tension, Garfiel clacked his fangs and spoke up.

“When ya charged in there, I wasn’t sure what was gonna happen, but I’m relieved ya made it out safe ’n’ sound. I can’t laugh at ya for it; ‘the wind can’t bring down Gafgari on fruit’ ’n’ all!”

“Ow! Hey, wait a— Ow! Owww!”

Garfiel laughed heartily as he violently swatted Subaru’s shoulder.

The slap was hard enough to make Subaru’s entire body go numb, which made him shudder and think, He’s gonna do it with everyone watching?! But he sensed no malice coming from Garfiel’s smiling face. He was simply welcoming Subaru and Emilia back after they returned safe and sound. The reaction was a little—no, absolutely—beyond his expectations.

“That’s…it?”

“Aah? Wha…? Are ya such a crybaby ya need me to rub your head and say it’s all right?”

“Like that’d make anyone feel better. That’s not what I meant but…nah.”

Subaru pulled back his tongue, on the verge of saying something that risked stirring up a hornet’s nest. After all, the current Garfiel didn’t seem to bear him any ill will. That, at least, was something to be welcomed.

“I was kinda worried if I’d stuck around you, you’d look down on me for my body odor…”

“The heck are ya…? Me, I really don’t like bein’ associated with body odor like that.”

“—. Just take that as meaning it’s an issue with my body, would you? More importantly, let’s sit down somewhere before discuss all the fine details. Talking while we’re standing like this isn’t great, right?”

“That’s true. Subaru must be tired from crying so much, after all…”

“Emilia-tan!”

Emilia agreed with Subaru’s point of view while adding further fuel to the crybaby fire. She responded to Subaru’s sorrowful voice by sticking out her tongue. “I’m sorry,” she offered in a cutesy apology.

Forgiving her teasing because of how adorable she was, Subaru harbored a different set of thoughts within his chest.

—This time, unlike all prior runs, Emilia had not become terribly despondent due to failing the Trial.

The trigger for that change was the pathetic reality of Emilia recovering from panic faster than Subaru, but either way, this time she had confronted her past but still retained a strong heart.

It was not set in stone that her mental state would have a positive effect on the Trial going forward, but—

“It’s worth giving it a shot, huh?”

“Mr. Natsuki? Is something the matter?”

“Nothin’ really.”

As the group started to change locations, Otto called out to Subaru when he began lagging behind. Responding with a shrug of his shoulders, Subaru quickly caught up to them.

Emilia’s heart was still unbroken by the Trial and Garfiel remained neutral.

The circumstances surrounding the Sanctuary had shown him different faces upon every repetition. This time proved no exception, but Subaru was keenly aware how this was the most solid starting situation to date.

“After that, it comes down to what I try and what I get out of it, huh?”

To hell with dying for nothing. I have to use death more effectively.

All the death until that point had meaning to it…even the repeated deaths of the world and the Sanctuary.

Hence—

“Making it back from inside that shadow has gotta be worth something.”

His head complained of slight pain. In a corner of his mind rested a lingering memory of being mixed with other people.

Surely something in there could provide some meaning to his death and that chance encounter with the Witch.

Sub-chapter 2.

The party left the tomb, heading toward Ryuzu’s residence, which served as a de facto inn.

Where the conversation passing between them in the guest room was concerned, there was no great change in the issues regarding the Trial. But unlike before, there was the exceptionally major difference that Emilia was participating in that conversation.

Up until the last run, Emilia had been wedged between her sense of duty and her fear toward her past, with the seemingly insurmountable weight causing her to waste away. But this time was different.

“I’m sorry about today. I made everyone worry, and I really caused trouble for Subaru…but I think it’s plain to see that I have to do this.”

Subaru could not tell what everyone thought of Emilia proclaiming her determination at the end of the meeting. But for his part, Subaru was proud of her, feeling a desire to applaud. In fact, he did.

On that note, the day’s meeting came to a conclusion, adjourning so that people might prepare for the morrow.

“Emilia-tan, make sure you bundle up; take your time and rest, okay? If you don’t feel sleepy anymore, I can stay by your bedside from ‘good night’ to ‘good morning’ but…”

“Mmm, I’m completely all right. You need a break as much as I do, don’t you, Subaru? Noon and night makes twice you’ve collapsed in that tomb today, so…”

“Ahhh, I guess it does. Yeah, you’re right. I’ll take care, too.”

As Subaru gave Emilia her send-off to bed, her observation made him scratch his head and give off a vague smile.

Having accepted this change in Emilia, Subaru hadn’t told anyone about him and the tomb—in other words, the fact that he had taken the Trial and overcome the first part.

This was out of consideration for Emilia, for if she knew Subaru had overcome the Trial she had failed, it would make her harbor unnecessary thoughts of self-reproach. If this time, Emilia could preserve a strong mental state, then the results of her second attempt might change as well. He remained hopeful.

And even if the result was the same, the knowledge of that was still something worth obtaining. There was value in trying.

—More importantly, this time Subaru wouldn’t be overly focusing on clearing the tomb.

If he challenged the tomb, he could meet Echidna within the Trial once more. There was no mistake that this would be of aid to him, but at the moment, Subaru lacked the qualifications sufficient to meet her.

His preparations were insufficient. He was still lacking new information, new results, new everything—under these circumstances, even if he met Echidna, it would only amount to her indulging Subaru. He would rather avoid that if he could help it.

Accordingly, Subaru needed to accumulate something that was merited another meeting with the Witch. For that sake as well, Subaru’s current top priority was proving that the “memories” resting inside of his head were not mistaken.

“Ram, I need to talk to you for a second. Is now good?”

“How indecent.”

“You jump to bad-sounding conclusions fast!”

After parting with Emilia, Subaru addressed Ram as she tidied up the guest room.

Staying in the Ryuzu residence were Emilia and Roswaal, and Ram, who was tending to their needs, for three guests total. By rights, Subaru ought to have been spending the night with the people of Earlham Village in the Cathedral but—

“But today I have something that comes first. You remember the promise we discussed before challenging the tomb, right?”

“Of course. But I am surprised that you remembered, Barusu. You had quite a busy time in the tomb, I am sure.”

Though she was obviously referring to him collapsing inside and crying his eyes out, Subaru kept his mouth shut about that. This was after having been laughed at for the Crybaby Barusu incident aplenty. Right now, Subaru had more important things to talk about.

“Anyway, the promise…by which you mean Master Roswaal making time to speak with you, I take it…”

“Because of extenuating circumstances, I want to defer that promise until later. In exchange, Ram, I want a favor from you.”

“How indecent.”

“Don’t make this a running gag!!”

He sighed at the scowl Ram was giving him. He hadn’t gone as far as scrapping the promise completely, but from her demeanor, Ram didn’t think much of Subaru’s arbitrary request. Even so, she shrugged her shoulders.

“—Fine. Master Roswaal did tell me to put myself at Barusu’s disposal. And should this be some manner of vulgar scheme, it is Barusu who will regret it later.”

“Can I just point out that I’m not looking at you with indecent eyes or anything?!”

“I suppose not. What Barusu turns toward Ram is not a gaze of carnal desire but something vaguer.”

The sudden statement perplexed Subaru. However, he immediately realized what she was really getting at. And from Subaru’s perspective, it amounted to being sucker punched from a blind spot.

After all, Ram was asserting that Subaru was looking right through Ram and seeing “someone” else instead.

Even though he’d been trying his best to be careful and avoid this—

“What a pathetic face. It is not a repulsive gaze, though, so I won’t speak of it any further…”

Noticing that Subaru was unsettled made Ram narrow her eyes. This was not exasperation or scorn but an emotion of gloom so thin it was almost invisible to the eye. That made it stab at Subaru’s chest all the more.

Though their personalities differed greatly, that gentleness was commonly shared by the sisters who looked like two peas in a pod.

“”

He thought it his true desire to divulge to Ram every last thing about Rem. He wanted to tell her that she had a doting little sister at the mansion trapped in a slumber from which she could not awaken. Subaru wanted to speak about the feelings, the memories he had for the two of them until he could speak no more.

—But Subaru knew of a world where this had led to Ram’s attempt to sacrifice Rem. The despair and dejection of that moment kept Subaru from speaking of Rem.

A world where Ram abandoned Rem, where the elder sister abandoned the younger, would undoubtedly drive him mad.

“…You had something to ask of Ram?”

“Uh, er?”

“Please close your mouth and stop making that idiotic face. It was not my intention to make you feel bad, Barusu. Ram wishes to carry out Master Roswaal’s instructions. To do that, all that is required is for me to listen to your story.”

“That’s a big help… Er, actually I wanted to ask a favor having to do with Garfiel.”

Graciously going along with Ram’s rare generosity, Subaru finally reached the main issue. The name he brought up as the topic made Ram narrow her eyes just a tad.

“Has something happened with Garf?”

“—. It’s about what’s gonna happen. The odds are pretty high that he’s going to get in the way of my covert activities. If I could have you keep him occupied, I can—”

“Seize the opportunity and give his head a good wham from behind, yes?”

“Even if I did that, wouldn’t it just end with me being sent packing? Geez…”

In fact, Garfiel’s strength was so great that an ordinary person like Subaru wasn’t even in the right dimension required to consider delivering a knockout blow. He’d already seen Garfiel fight three times during their initial encounter, later in his bestial state, and of course, the battle against the Witch, and that was plenty.

Even if Ram actually did charm him, the results of a fight would no doubt be the same. Ram seemed to agree with his assessment.

“While it is true that Garf is rather taken with me, but the one has nothing to do with the other. I assume you require no explanation for how absurdly strong he is.”

“Yeah, if it came to violence, I’d go down in one blow.”

“You would hardly be worth the time. How cheeky of Garf.”

Ram’s manner of speaking was belied by the gentleness in her eyes whenever she spoke about Garfiel. It was impossible to tell precisely what emotions lay behind those pink eyes, and Subaru, failing to glean anything, abandoned the attempt.

Garfiel was an obstacle. He was a wall that needed to be climbed over. There was no room to see him as anything more than that. He’d determined Garfiel to be his foe. If Ram was the most appropriate means for overcoming him, he just needed to make her trust him.

“…There is a disagreeable look in your eyes, Barusu.”

But when Subaru fell silent, Ram murmured as the temperature of her cruel gaze dipping.

“I do not know what you have seen on the way h— No, what you saw in the tomb, but it is unlikely to have been anything good. Compared to the gaze that clearly sees someone else when you look at me, this is far viler.”

“…Quit it with the weird suspicions. All I did in the tomb was sleep. The dream I had wasn’t all that bad.”

The dream—his passing encounter with the white-haired Witch, Echidna, floated up into the back of his mind.

Having conversed with Echidna three times already, he wouldn’t say he knew everything there was to know about the Witch, but her existence was a very big deal so far as Subaru was concerned.

Amid those precious few opportunities, his mind had been saved, he had obtained the strength to move forward, and she had even saved his life.

She was someone he could reveal Return by Death to, someone he could speak to about it—that alone was unspeakably precious.

“”

For a time, Subaru’s black eyes and Ram’s pink eyes stared at each other.

He almost felt like she was reproaching him for having been saved by a Witch, but Subaru denied that with his gaze. It was not clear whether his intent had been properly communicated, but Ram abruptly averted her eyes.

“…I shall draw Garf off. Do whatever wicked deeds you have planned.”

“Thanks, I’m counting on ya… Sorry. You’re not in the wrong. I get that.”

As if to paper over the awkward atmosphere, Subaru appended those words and, not waiting for a reply, made his way out of the room.

When he left the building, the warm breeze filtering through the Sanctuary tickled Subaru’s bangs. Smelling the scent of grass mixed in with the nighttime breeze, Subaru’s legs slowly took him in the direction of the forest. The settlement’s bonfire had already been extinguished, but thanks to the moonlight, his footsteps were steady.

After walking for a little while, he abruptly heard the sound of finger whistling coming from the direction of the Ryuzu residence.

“…Don’t tell me that’s her way of calling Garfiel over?”

Guessing that it was Ram doing whistling, he pictured Garfiel being called over by it in his mind. It made him think that the relationship between them was owner and pet and definitely not that of a man and a woman.

Either way, he was grateful for Ram keeping Garfiel occupied. At the moment, he had bigger worries and priorities than their relationship.

—To determine whether it was true, Subaru arrived at a path that was not a path and entered the heart of the forest.

Sub-chapter 3.

Subaru breathed deeply to endure the powerful, throbbing pain of the memories.

Biting down on his back teeth, thick sweat came onto his brow as he forced open his field of vision, matching the scenery with the memories. He used his arms to part the overgrown vines and branches, advancing into the heart of thick green that even beasts disliked, heading deeper and deeper.

The throbbing memories he gained when he was swallowed by shadow, and his very being had been on the verge of dissolving into the murky water, he saw a ray of hope.

Murky water—that was the only thing he could call that situation. When his existence was whisked into the shadow, melting into the darkness, Subaru was merged with the numerous “consciousnesses” within. These were probably the minds of the victims who had been engulfed by the Witch’s shadow. Subaru had managed to escape only moments before he would have shared their fate.

What followed was fruitlessly losing his life despite fighting his hardest, but Subaru’s living or dying was not important. —Having touched upon the memories of others held in that shadow’s embrace, the fact that he had returned with a part of those thoughts was crucial.

From a fragment cut off from the memories, he had deduced he’d been seeing things wrong, coming up with mistaken answers for important questions. This came via the vile practice of mixing with numerous other people, but even so, the return on investment was exceptionally large.

After all, he’d managed to come back with a great deal, even if it took one of Subaru’s lives to fish it out.

“That leaves confirming what those memories say… The details kinda give me the willies, though.”

With the scenery around him all the color of green, he just couldn’t find the hidden facility inside the forest that was his destination—that hard-to-find white building that Subaru had unwittingly arrived at twice.

The first time was when he’d been incarcerated by Garfiel; the second time, he’d arrived at the place through a teleport via the crystal’s power. Subaru did not know the truth behind the building. But the memories were urging him onward.

They kept urging that this was one of the Sanctuary’s secrets, and believing in this, Subaru continued walking until—

“—Found you.”

In the depths of the forest, Subaru spotted the weathered white structure. He wiped the sweat off his brow.

The building, standing quietly amid the deep green, had an air about it that seemed to reject the entry of people—no, it was not people alone whose entry it rejected. It was animals, insects…everything.

The proof of this was the strange odor prickling Subaru’s nose the instant he spotted the building.

“Ughh…this scent’s still going strong, too, huh?”

Wiping his lips with his sleeve, he didn’t think anyone would enter that structure without a very good reason.

“But I’m going in… Can’t get a tiger’s cub without going into a tiger’s den and all.”

Slowly, carefully, Subaru approached the building’s entrance. The stonework building was fairly weathered, but just like the tomb, there seemed to be no need to worry about it collapsing. Seeing that there was no door, leaving him free to enter and exit through the entrance, he confirmed that there was no sign of human presence as he began his infiltration.

It was fairly dark inside the building, but moonlight filtered in through cracks in the ceiling. Relying upon this to ensure he could still see, Subaru scrupulously inspected the floor and walls as he headed deeper inside.

Subaru had been to that place twice before, once through confinement and once through teleportation, but neither occasion permitted him any leeway to scrutinize the structure, so he’d put studying the place on the back burner. He had come to regret putting many things on the back burner in that fashion. This, too, he now had cause to mourn, but—

“This cavity in the wall… This is from the memory… Gii?!”

Sparks scattered across the backs of Subaru’s eyelids, his eyes becoming teary as he became certain that this and the memories matched together.

As he looked around the facility, there was a room in the farthest reaches that was twice as large as any along the way. This was the room in which Subaru had been held during his captivity. The back wall of the room maintained an unnatural whiteness, as if it had been bleached, and it was here he discovered a strange cavity. The cavity had clearly been purposefully created, and when he timidly peered closer, Subaru thought it looked like a place where you’d hide something.

—No, he did not “think” it. The memories knew. This was where the crystal had been placed.

“Placed but why?”

He took out of his pocket the blue crystal that Frederica had possessed. Having been teleported by it twice over, Subaru handled the stone with great care as he placed it within the cavity.

Maybe something will happen or maybe nothing will happen—but the instant after he had the thought…

“—?!!”

The instant the crystal left his hand, light gushed from it. The dazzling blue made Subaru’s breath catch as he instantly shielded his face with his arm. Then he slowly squinted toward the light, and…

“…Oh come on.”

He unwittingly let his voice trickle out. The blue light generated from the center of the cavity gradually waned. In the place the light vanished from was— No, rather, the issue was what wasn’t: the white wall that ought to have been there.

The wall with the cavity vanished, and so came to be an entrance to another room hidden behind it. Then, when Subaru looked at what was in the hidden room, he was at a loss for words.

At the center of the room was enshrined a huge crystal large enough to just wrap his arms around it.

—On the inside of the beautiful blue light was a curled-up girl, her body sealed inside the crystal.

“Th-this…is…”

Wobbly, Subaru entered the room with a precarious gait, drawing nearer to the crystal.

The sight stole his eyes away. Such was the extent of the surreal beauty before him.

The blue transparent crystal put on display a girl so beautiful it was tragic. The impression given was near to that of a block of ice, but unlike ice, which could be melted to free someone from it, the crystal was eternal so long as it remained unbroken. And breaking the crystal would be the same thing as breaking the girl’s life.

It was a cruel work of art, with the crystal girl as the centerpiece—and her face was familiar to him.

“…Ryuzu, is that you?”

The person inside the crystal had long pink hair. The still-young physique was clad in a simple one-piece dress. Her body was curled up like someone sitting with folded legs in phys ed class, and the girl’s long-eyelash-bearing eyes were closed as if she was asleep.

This was, without any doubt, Ryuzu Bilma, the representative of the Sanctuary.

Or more precisely, he ought to have called her a girl who was Ryuzu’s spitting image.

“It’s not just the crystal. What’s with the whole atmosphere of this room…?”

The metallic pedestal supporting the crystal gave off a faint light, granting dim lighting to the entirety of the room. Subaru’s eyes, then accustomed to darkness, found the light sufficient to survey the entire layout of the room.

The impression the scene gave Subaru was that of a bizarre experimental facility.

Of course, this was a world far removed from mechanical technology. That place was no exception, and he could see no extravagant devices within it. And yet, Subaru had without doubt received the impression it was an experimental facility.

Perhaps that impression had come not from Subaru but through the memories within him.

And the answer was likely—

“Something you only get from coming here. That’s the sense I get. Close enough?”

“…I wonder. I am not confident I have the answers you seek, Young Su.”

“That excuse stopped working the second you showed up here, I gotta say.”

Turning around, he offered a strained smile to the figure that spoke after appearing at the entrance. The familiar face seemed tired somehow as it pleasantly returned the smile—and moreover, there were two of them.

The one with the staff with whom Subaru had exchanged words was Ryuzu Bilma. And the other one was—

“This is the…girl who guided me after the teleportation?”

“”

Without replying to Subaru, the girl looking exactly like Ryuzu maintained an expressionless silence.

Unlike Ryuzu, she did not have a cane, and the simple poncho-style robe matched up with the girl who’d guided Subaru to the tomb. However, that did not mean it was the same girl for certain.

As if to underline Subaru’s guess, Ryuzu shook her head.

“Probably not. This girl is one of those who stand watch over this place. The one who you met in the forest, Young Su, was a different…was no more than one part of the Sanctuary’s eyes.”

“The Sanctuary’s eyes, huh…? It sounds like some kind of surveillance net. So a group of multiple Ryuzus keeps watch in the forest. No wonder you know everything that goes on around here.”

Subaru’s words, spoken with complete confidence, caused Ryuzu to slightly raise her eyebrows, whereupon she nodded.

The eyes of the Sanctuary—Subaru now had an answer for the question about that metaphor he’d carried over from a previous time around.

It was two runs prior. Having escaped his confinement at that facility, just how had Garfiel seen through the plan to escape the Sanctuary—the plot hatched by Ram and Otto?

The answer to that question was the Sanctuary surveillance net employing multiple Ryuzus.

“I had never thought Young Su would uncover this place a mere half a day after arrival. I have lived here many years, but I have rarely been surprised so.”

“The credit doesn’t go to just me. It’s thanks to the memories that brought me here.”

“Memories, a strange answer indeed. Just whose memories were they?”

“I wonder. —I think they’re probably from someone who knows about this place.”

Ryuzu skeptically furrowed her brows, but Subaru did not disclose the secret of the memories. This was not maliciousness on his part but because he had judged that revealing any more would be dangerous.

This information had been gleaned from falling deep into the Witch of Jealousy’s shadow. If he explained where he’d gotten them from, the odds of breaking the Witch’s taboo were rather high. Accordingly, he chose to not tell Ryuzu anything else.

But what had developed from that, namely Subaru acting based on his belief in those memories, was another matter.

He believed that by going there and asserting these memories, he would draw closer to Ryuzu’s secret.

“And in point of fact, I turned out to be the bait drawing Ryuzu out. Wasn’t far-fetched or reckless at all, was it?”

“It was certainly a gamble for you. Did you think about what Young Gar might do if he spotted you?”

“I did think about it, so I asked Ram to keep him occupied. In the meantime, it’s a date between you and me, Ryuzu.”

“I am unsure what it is you mean by dayte…but I cannot defy you at this point, Young Su. You may do with me and the girl here as you wish.”

“That’s giving in a little too much! In the first place, I just want to ask you some things. If possible, I’d like to ask you for your cooperation afterward, but…”

This was hardly his first choice but if push came to shove, it was entirely possible that he would have to confront Garfiel.

As a matter of fact, he didn’t know for sure that Ryuzu agreed with all of Garfiel’s positions. Subaru needed to think of inflated hopes or easy trust as dangerous things.

“—There is no need for concern. It is as I said. I cannot defy your words, Young Su.”

However, in the face of Subaru’s concerns, Ryuzu repeated herself as if trying to remind him of something.

The weight of those words left Subaru downright perplexed. Ryuzu wore a thin, pleasant smile that confused Subaru as she glanced at the girl standing right beside her who bore the same face as she did. Then she picked up from where she had left off.

“We cannot defy the Apostles of Greed. —This is the pact that has been imposed upon us, the replicas of Ryuzu Meyer.”

Somehow, resignation seemed to cross her powerless smile as she spoke.

Sub-chapter 4.

They exited the facility and led Subaru to a single house in a place that was isolated even by Sanctuary standards.

They could not simply return to the settlement, and Subaru was reluctant to hold a conversation in a place with such a caustic odor, so this suited him just fine. It seemed a little too good to be true, but—

“Such a deeply suspicious child. With that personality, you will die of mental fatigue at a young age.”

“That’s unexpectedly unfunny, and sometimes things get to you whether your suspicions are deep or shallow.”

When Subaru was looking around the room in dead seriousness, Ryuzu gave off a sigh with the air of a strained smile. Then she set her cane aside, picking up a pot for pouring tea in its place.

“Sit somewhere suitable. I will pour the tea.”

“I know how to pour tea at least. Ram taught me so I’m a bit confident in my skill.”

“A great part of me would be grateful for that, but now is simply not the time, is it?”

With the smiling, eyes-narrowed Ryuzu watching him, Subaru sat down on a bed, and the Ryuzu look-alike girl grasped Subaru’s tracksuit, as if trying not to let him escape.

Subaru was at a loss as to what to call the girl who Ryuzu herself had called a replica, until finally—

“She’s really clingy… Er, no, that can’t be it. Piko doesn’t plan on letting me escape, I take it?”

“Nicknames aside, she bears no ill will. Apostles must be welcomed with special favor. I assure you, she will not mind if you give her a little slap for being naughty.”

“Calling it naughty makes it sound a lot less like a bold confrontation, you know…”

Ryuzu’s elderly advice brought a look of dissatisfaction from Subaru. With Subaru like that, Ryuzu handed him a steaming cup, then proceeded to sit in a chair and turn to face him.

“It is hot tea. ’Tis it not best to blow on it first?”

“I’m not a little kid, so I’m not gonna bring it to my mouth all nervous and give myself a big burn, okay?”

“There is a restless one close to me with a cat’s tongue, so I am in the habit of giving warnings.”

From the teasing way she said it, the one with the cattiest tongue, least able to take the heat, had to be Garfiel.

Bringing the poured tea to his lips and finding it fairly hot, just as Ryuzu had said, he wet his dry lips and took a breath. When he thought about it, this was the first moisture he had received since his Return from Death—in other words, since awakening in the tomb. His throat was craving that moisture beyond what he’d expected.

And so Subaru promptly drank the cup dry, audibly placing the cup on the table as he spoke.

“There we go. I know this is right after an unsettling conversation, but can we get to the point?”

“How impatient of you. But I have no reason to refuse or the personality to do so. Do as you please.”

“You being cooperative is a big help… And I take it that this Apostle of Greed is kind of the reason you’re so cooperative?”

As they began the Q&A session, Subaru efficiently cut straight to the most recent question on his mind.

It was the first time he was hearing the term, but it was the sort of thing that required little in the way of imagination after hearing it. After all, there was just too strong a whiff of a connection to the Witch of Greed.

The question made Ryuzu close her eyes and sink into thought. By no means was she rejecting his first request of the conversation. It was just that the silent girl was displaying a quite gloomy expression.

Finally, Ryuzu let out a sigh that sounded far older than suited her appearance as she said, “…Young Su, surely you know whose hands first established this land?”

“Whose hands? That’d be Roswaal’s fami— No, it wouldn’t.”

Answering reflexively, Subaru shook his head midway, realizing his answer was wrong.

The Sanctuary had purportedly been administered to by the Roswaal family for generation after generation, and the current Roswaal had inherited that role. However, it sounded like the administrator and the creator were two separate parties.

“Meaning the one who built this place was the Witch of Greed… Echidna.”

“Yes. A certain Witch built upon this soil a place to accomplish a certain Witch’s purpose. It is a testing ground to fulfill a dream traced by that certain Witch.”

“Testing ground… Garfiel said something pretty close to that.”

Garfiel had made the statement when Subaru and the others arrived at the settlement in the Sanctuary.

He had called this deadlocked testing ground the tomb of the Witch of Greed. At the time, the word Witch had seemed most important, so he’d let the testing ground part slide, but now that he had seen the girl in the crystal, the impression given by that facility made him unable to forget those words any longer.

“If this is the Witch of…Echidna’s testing ground, what kind of test is she running?”

“The details of the test, you ask? Where that is concerned, the examples of success are right before you, Young Su.”

The corners of Ryuzu’s lips twisted as she spread both arms out in a theatrical gesture. Her behavior made Subaru’s breath catch. —When he guessed the true meaning of her words, he sent his gaze toward Ryuzu and Piko.

“So Ryuzu and this girl are the results of the experiment being conducted here.”

“—There was a girl who looked exactly like me shut inside the crystal, yes?”

“…Yeah, your spitting image. Ryuzu, are you, Piko, and her triplets of some kind?”

“If you wish to treat those with the same faces as sisters, three is a number that is just a little insufficient.”

“Just a little, huh?”

“Just a little, yes.”

By joking around “just a little,” Ryuzu delicately evaded the truth. But Subaru already knew what Ryuzu was trying to gloss over—that there were over twenty replicas.

That said, there was nothing to be gained from pointing that out. The important things were the fine details about the relationship between that facility and the replicas and the experiment being conducted in the Sanctuary.

“That crystal…or a magic crystal rather? That girl inside of it, what’s her relationship to you, Ryuzu?”

Switching his wording from crystal to magic crystal, Subaru unhesitatingly cut to the heart of the matter. Receiving his question, Ryuzu shifted her gaze toward the wordless girl.

“The answer to that question is not an issue for me alone. This girl and I stand in identical positions.”

“The girl in the magic crystal included, right?”

“No, that girl alone is different. That girl alone is the exception, for that girl alone is the real one.”

Having been told this yet being unable to digest the contents, Subaru skeptically knit his brows.

“Real one? What do you mean by ‘real one’…?”

“Now, now, do not be hasty. An elder’s tale is constructed by sifting through old memories. One must be prepared to come along for the ride.”

“I’ve come this far, so can you stop appealing to your age, which aside from tone of voice doesn’t show at all? I’ve got tasteless, odorless Pico right beside me already, so if there’s nothing but that old granny scent for seasoning, I’m gonna split in two right here.”

“Hmm…this has given rise to a rather unfortunate misunderstanding. To me, everything I have constructed about myself is precious, for that is how I gained my individuality.”

“Gained your individuality?”

Having heard the turn of phrase, he repeated it, unable to simply let it go. Subaru desperately tried to make his brain digest it, but Ryuzu, paying no heed to his mental anguish, added, “That’s right,” before continuing her tale.

“Tasteless and odorless… It is as you say, Young Su. That girl is empty on the inside. And I began the same. The ‘me’ that you see today is no more than the contents poured into an empty vessel over the course of long months and years.”

“Wait, wait, wait! This conversation’s developing really fast! Created? Still empty? We skipped over somethin’ really important there. Saying the girl in the magic crystal is the real one isn’t enough of an explanation!”

“The girl within the magic crystal is the original, the first Ryuzu. —Ryuzu Meyer.”

Subaru drew in his breath when that name was stated. Ryuzu greeted his hesitation with a single nod and said, “That is the real Ryuzu. All other Ryuzus, me included, are replicas of Ryuzu Meyer…which would make us imitations.”

Thus did Ryuzu declare that she—like the others—was a duplicate.

Subaru had no immediate follow-up to that explanation. Her explanation just then matched up with the vague theory Subaru had inside of him from having seen many Ryuzus for himself. The reason he’d averted his eyes from that theory was none other than Subaru not wanting to believe it.

The prejudice in his mind came from physiological disgust toward the fact that an “acquaintance” of his was a clone.

“Does knowing I am an imitation change how you see me?”

“…Dunno. I want to say it doesn’t. I want to, I really do…especially when the person concerned asks that right in front of me.”

Since he was in a different world than his own, it was not appropriate for him to call Ryuzu a clone. The way she had been born was probably fundamentally different from Subaru’s imagination. Besides, even if it was a fact she was a replica, all life was equal. It had to be equal. —Yes, even though he understood it in his head…

“I don’t have any confidence I could nod and say that with a chill look on my face. So I’m not gonna say those words lightly.”

“You are kind, Young Su. That is also being soft, naive…excessively honest to the core.”

He’d been absolutely certain it was not an answer that would leave her pleased. But Ryuzu nodded, apparently satisfied with Subaru’s reply. The gesture tugged at Subaru’s thoughts, and he came to stare at the girl sitting right beside him.

The girl he’d dubbed Piko as a matter of convenience gazed at the room with emotionless eyes. She continued to keep hold of Subaru’s sleeve, almost looking like a doll. —Even though it was impossible for a doll to have her physical warmth.

“That you feel something like physical warmth is no more than a function of a false body.”

“A false body… Whaddaya mean, false? I can touch it and everything.”

“Producing a vessel of flesh from nothing is no easy thing. Can you even imagine the principles by which the girl and I are able to exist like this, Young Su?”

She said it like she was testing him. Subaru restrained his mind’s craving for an immediate answer and sank into thought. With Ryuzu taking such an earnest posture, he wanted his own demeanor to be in kind. For that sake, he brought all mental hands on deck.

“Could it be mana…? So making a body like that of a spirit?”

Abruptly, the existence of a little kitty Great Spirit quite familiar to him broached that possibility in his mind.

Normally, Puck was inside a crystal; when he materialized, he formed a physical body out of mana. Was it not possible that a physical body, a false body that held warmth, might follow along the same lines?

Ryuzu responded to Subaru’s idea by clapping her hands, acting quite impressed.

“Well done. You did well to think of that, even though no one told you the answer.”

“That’s because you gave me a hint that led me to the answer. All I did after that was realize from a spirit that’s close from time to time… So should I take that as meaning I’m right?”

“It is very close to the mark. Our physical replica bodies are created by a ritual, using artificial odo at its core. Enshrouding mana around this core materializes these bodies into being.”

“Odo, that was the power in the body, as distinct from the mana that floats in the atmosphere, wasn’t it?”

“Odo rests within all that lives. Accordingly, it is even said that odo is proof of the soul.”

The mismatched gravity with which the young voice spoke the words made Subaru unwittingly draw in his breath.

If odo was proof of the soul, then using a ritual to create it was surely—

“This is kind of putting it lightly, but ain’t that…creating life?”

“Of course, rather special conditions must be in order to make such a phenomenon possible. Unfortunately, I was unable to comprehend the details. —You may simply think of the formula’s creation as the result of a Witch’s quest and the result obtained via experimentation.”

“This is pretty far-out stuff… She was really something, huh?”

Becoming the creator of life was a feat that rivaled God himself. Setting aside the pros and cons of accomplishing the feat, it was surely worth praising the talent behind bringing it into fruition. —Yes, the talent itself was praiseworthy.

However, the impression that the feat of creating life was violating a sacred taboo was another matter entirely.

“I wonder what she did an experiment like that for? I suppose that’s the next topic for discussion.”

“Mmm.”

“Put bluntly, magic’s totally out of my expertise. I can’t even begin to understand how incredible what Echidna did is. Even so, I can tell it’s really something else.”

As Ryuzu folded her arms, adopting the posture of the listener, Subaru continued his words.

“Where’d the motivation come from to do something that incredible? What brought it on? Why did Echidna make the replicas of Ryuzu…of Ryuzu Meyer?”

As mysteries of the Sanctuary went, the girl named Ryuzu Meyer stood in the number one spot.

The Ryuzu Bilma before his eyes called herself the Sanctuary’s current representative. Her family name differed from that of the original. From the conversation to date, he could tell that she had arrived at that position over the course of a prolonged period of time. In that case, where Ryuzu Meyer’s relationship to the Witch was concerned—

“…I thought I’d float a possibility that came to mind.”

“Oh-ho. Do tell?”

“This is the time-honored way these stories tend to go—my theory is, for some reason, the girl named Ryuzu Meyer lost her life, and she tried to resurrect the girl in the form of replicas.”

The eternal search for how to bring back a life that had been lost, realistic or not, was a difficult issue.

There were all kinds of ideas proposed to deal with that difficult issue, including reproducing the dead via clone technology, which led to constructing substitutes in their place. And in the vast majority of these fictional circumstances, this was greeted by numerous failures along the lines of Even if you bring the physical body back, you cannot bring back the soul.

“Given what you said, Ryuzu, and the state of Piko here, the possibility this experiment ended in the same kind of failure seems pretty high. It feels like, even if the appearance is completely the same, you can’t reproduce what’s on the inside.”

If Echidna stubbornly kept creating more replicas without giving up, that was truly an act of madness. Even after over twenty failures, had she continued hoping for the possibility the soul might be resurrected?

But the one thing Subaru couldn’t do was dismiss that as mere obsession. He absolutely could not think of wanting for, struggling for someone to be brought back to life as wrong. Not Subaru, racing in search of an optimal future that very moment—

“Although I think you and the others are probably qualified to blame her, Ryuzu.”

“And say, we did not ask to be created like this? I have lived a little too long to make such a naive plea… Besides, it seems you have an overidealized view of the Witch, Young Su.”

“‘Overidealized view of the Witch’?”

Subaru’s eyes went wide, as if he’d never expected that to be said to him. To that Subaru, Ryuzu said, “It is as if you are watching a dream,” forming a smile that gave off a rather desolate air as she gently shook her head.

“I take it, you are thinking along the lines of…if the Witch went to the extreme of such experiments to bring Ryuzu Meyer back to life, the girl must have been an irreplaceable being from the perspective of the Witch?”

“Well, yeah… I mean, is there any other answer?”

In point of fact, no other answer came to mind. The Witch had tried to bring the girl back to the point of drawing up a ritual to create a soul. So the girl must have been that important to her—what other answer was there?

“Ryuzu Meyer was a mere village girl. The circumstances of her birth were just a little special, but…she was certainly not close to the Witch nor were they related by blood. Ryuzu Meyer and the Witch were such strangers that the times they had spoken could no doubt have been counted on one hand.”

“”

“Incidentally, Young Su. Earlier, you deduced that the experiment in this land had failed, yes?”

“—? Y-yeah.”

Subaru was perplexed at how she had put the current discussion on hold and had gone back to a matter from a little earlier. But Subaru being thrown off did not make Ryuzu hesitate to land an additional blow.

“The experiment in this land failed not. I told you before—I am an example of its success.”

“Ryuzu, you’re an example of success…? No, wait! Something’s weird about that!”

Overwhelmed, Subaru thrust a palm out and second-guessed what had just been said.

Ryuzu’s wording was strange. After all, had she not explained previously?

“You said you were born empty. I know you said you were born the same as Piko is now, and you came to be as you are now. How does that make you a success?”

“My, my. Having that said to my face is rather hurtful, you know?”

“Please don’t make light of it! I’m seriously… I’m seriously asking this!”

He accepted that his statement was inconsiderate. But it wasn’t a situation where he could tread lightly.

The force of Subaru’s words brought a rather strained smile from Ryuzu. She gently touched a hand to her chest.

According to the explanation to that point, there was no heart beating behind her diminutive chest. However, Piko conveyed warmth to him as she sat by his side. Where was that heat coming from? he wondered.

This was the proof of the soul, the result created by Echidna’s experiment to create life—

“—That girl and I, born empty, are successes of the Witch’s experiment. Those words are no lie.”

As Ryuzu repeated her earlier words, Subaru calmed down his quickened heart and nodded.

Ryuzu was saying that their being born as dolls in an empty state and not as reproductions of the original, Ryuzu Meyer—this was by the Witch’s intent. What was the meaning behind this?

“Back then, the girls leaping at the Witch were all the same as Piko…”

Obeying Garfiel’s commands, the replicas had sacrificed themselves against the Witch enshrouded by a vast shadow without the slightest fear. They’d been made that way…like dolls, merely obeying the commands issued to them.

Was that what that white-haired Witch wanted? Was that what she was after?

“You could pass it off as curiosity to that point, but what could she learn from that? If she wanted that, brainwashing someone appropriate would’ve been a hell of a lot faster. Don’t tell me the motivation was madness of some sort—like, I thought of making them, so I did…”

And if it was so, that would be that. But for some reason, he was certain that it was not.

Why would Echidna make something from nothing, an empty vessel, something you could pour anything into—

“—Ah.”

Instantly, he saw it in the far distance, a possibility pieced together from various fragments.

It was simply a preposterous thought, the sort that one ought to forget about with a single shake of the head. But once the thought was given life, Subaru’s brain grabbed hold of it and would not let go.

This was the Witch of Greed, curiosity incarnate. She had a logical objective that lived up to that lofty title. She had a reason for constructing an empty vessel with nothing inside. After all, what is an empty vessel for—

“—It’s obvious. It’s for pouring something into it.”

If the empty vessel was the completed form, the objective was to fill it.

Just what would fill such a vessel? What could possibly be the ambition of someone called a Witch, a person who had a bottomless craving for knowledge and wanted to know all there was to learn in the world?

What was that something the Witch wanted to pour into an empty Ryuzu Meyer—

“—She’d pour personality, memory, knowledge…in other words, a soul.”

The deduction made Subaru feel like his throat had suddenly gone dry. In his place, Ryuzu picked up where Subaru left off.

Her blue eyes narrowed, and though the old woman seemed to be peering far into the distance, her gaze rested on her own offshoot standing right at his side—no, this was no offshoot. She shifted her eyes toward the doll that was like her own little sister.

“The Witch was supposed to pour herself into the body of Ryuzu Meyer. This was, in other words—”

“—one type of immortality.”

It was this conclusion that unveiled the truth about the experiment conducted in the Sanctuary.

Sub-chapter 5.

Immortality. There were many legends about such a thing stretching from ancient to modern times, from Occident and Orient alike. Life reaching that point formed an ideal.

For eternity, one would never grow old or wither, and the “self” would be tied to the world without passing through the great cycle of death and reincarnation. Even knowing that this violated the defining rules of life, there was much that was attractive about arriving at the pinnacle of living—

Yet, an exceedingly decrepit ring of truth rested behind those grandiose words.

“Immortality, that’s…a greedy thought even for a Witch. Immortality… It comes off as the goal of a small person obsessed with her own life, I’ve gotta say…”

“Whether being reluctant to part with life is a sign of poor character is open to personal interpretation, but at the very least, the Witch does not seem to regard her own life as a trivial thing. Fear of death is natural, as is searching for a way to keep it at bay. In most circumstances, it is the sort of desire one might laugh off, but…”

“Echidna was someone who had the ability to make it into a reality. And this is the result of that line of thinking?”

Looking down at Piko as she sat at his side, Subaru had the annoying sense that he couldn’t say anything bad about that. Piko did not react to his gaze, either. She simply had a vacant expression, as if simply awaiting his command.

“…If these girls really are empty, even making them cry like little babies would’ve been way better…”

“Apparently, that was not the Witch’s desire. What the Witch wanted in the end was a vessel…not one with a personality such as I but one beginning with the minimum intelligence required to obey instructions. To a certain extent, that would also give the Witch the option of keeping or discarding the memories of the girl from which they were extracted.”

Memory and intelligence were installed and saved within the empty vessel. Those were the easiest words he could use to describe it, but they weren’t talking about data. They were talking about a single person’s personality, memories, knowledge…a person’s soul.

“It’d let her implant her own memories into a new vessel. By doing that, when one body became old, if she kept creating new vessels, that’d definitely become one form of immortality. But…”

Maybe you could call passing down the personality and memory one sure way of conquering death. If you saved a personality like data, even if one vessel was destroyed due to some mistake, you could be resurrected through installation into a new vessel.

You could copy the personality, and you could copy the physical body—that was the immortality Echidna had theoretically established.

And when he unraveled the method behind the immortality Echidna had aimed for, he realized something.

“Ahhh, so that’s it… So that’s how it is.”

“Young Su?”

Suddenly, a sense of acceptance calmed the inside of his chest, and a dry smile came over Subaru.

The smile made Ryuzu’s brows grimace, but Subaru did not give her any reply. After all, it was meaningless to speak about it. There was no one who could understand what was inside Subaru’s chest that moment.

“Finally, I get it… I get the reason why you acted all chummy with me.”

To the smiling Echidna on the back of his eyelids, Subaru quietly let out what seemed like admiration.

Echidna’s objective was to prepare multiple replicas to inherit her own life and the personality and knowledge therein—immortality achieved through transference of the soul. This was, in other words, none other than her method of preparing for what came “after” life.

“—Just how different is that from my Return by Death…?”

From their very first meeting onward, Echidna had harbored a great deal of goodwill toward Subaru. She’d been his confidant, speaking to him at great length, and through the conduct she had displayed, the distance between them had been reduced, and she had obtained his trust.

Now he understood the true intent behind those actions. This was the Witch’s joy…a joy akin to that of discovery.

“I understand how you felt at the time… I mean, I was happy enough to cry…”

When Subaru had revealed Return by Death, it had saved him. Truly, he’d looked at the world a different way since. Probably she’d had the same feeling from the first time she and Subaru had met. That’s why Echidna…

“”

Because he understood that, there was no way he could harbor ill will toward her works. If anything, it made him feel closer to her. The emotion Subaru harbored for the Witch really was genuine gratitude…gratitude at having met someone cut from the same cloth.

Echidna desired immortality. Subaru continued to pile on death to win his future.

The methods did not change that both were engaged in rebellion at the single “life” that they ought to have had.

If that was so. —If that was so, in a true sense, was not Echidna the one being who could truly understand where he was coming from, and Echidna, him?

“…Ryuzu, I understand your position…and what Echidna was trying to do, too. So knowing this, I ask you…did Echidna succeed in her goal?”

“Her goal, in other words…”

“She prepared the vessels. All that was left was to overwrite one with her. Did that overwriting succeed? No, if I was to put it more bluntly…”

—Was Echidna alive somewhere in that world that very moment?

He’d cut off his words halfway because he felt like his tongue was going numb. But as if she sensed what was in his thoughts, Ryuzu shook her head. Slowly, she shook her head.

“I imagine it is to the chagrin of the Witch, but her plan was a failure… Echidna was not passed down.”

“Wh-why not? Did the personality installa— Etching fail?”

“It was not a complete failure. However, from the Witch’s point of view, her wish was incompletely granted.”

“Whaddaya mean, incompletely?”

“It is a simple matter… If the amount poured is too great for the vessel, of course the rest spills out. If one portion spills out, what remains is already something different from the original.”

Blinking at the echo of the word vessel, Subaru looked at Ryuzu, then Piko.

“When you say the vessel isn’t enough to hold it, you’re not talking about physical size, are you?”

“Perhaps it is better to say, the capacity for the soul. People are suited to the various souls that are inside of them. The vessel of Ryuzu Meyer was simply insufficient to accept the Witch of Greed.”

“Didn’t she…know that beforehand somehow?”

“I cannot know the entirety of a Witch’s thoughts. But the vessel chosen by the Witch, Ryuzu Meyer, was insufficient for the Witch’s hopes. As a result, her plans went awry…and a terrible failure came to be born.”

“Goodness,” went Ryuzu, a tired look on her as her shoulders fell. Subaru felt the same way.

Echidna had overlooked something in the fine details, an unfathomable error for a Witch. Knowing the person concerned, Subaru thought such an error was eminently understandable and predictable but—

“So the plan failed…but she still made replicas after that, right?”

“…However, those replicas were born from filling the magic crystal in that facility with a certain level of mana. The Witch designed it so that the magic crystal itself forms them.”

“The magic crystal itself… You mean she made it make the replicas automatically?”

“As a result, after the Witch’s death, only the facility remained, and even today the number of replicas continues to grow… It is all a matter of mana. That we require no material resources to live is the single saving grace.”

These words spoken, Ryuzu audibly sipped her tea with the same mouth that had just announced she required neither food nor drink.

“…You seem to drink tea just fine, though.”

“This is a hobby of mine. It is an individual quirk I acquired over the course of a long life.”

Subaru’s listless jab made Ryuzu’s little throat ring out with laughter. Feeling a little rescued by that laugh, Subaru let out a long sigh and put a question onto his lips.

“So what about this first ‘failed’ replica? Even if you couldn’t stuff the entire soul in, she must’ve inherited part of a Witch’s memories, right? Even if it wasn’t all the way, she’d still end up pretty witchy, right?”

“When poured liquid spills, one cannot pick and choose which part spills out? If it is minor memories that spill out, there might be no hindrance to everyday life, but if parts with a crucial impact on personality spill out, it is already beyond salvaging.”

Subaru thought Ryuzu’s roundabout explanation must apply to the first failed replica. In other words, she became something far from the Witch’s expectations—

“Thanks to that replica having a completely bankrupt personality yet having inherited a fragment of the power of the Witch of Greed, it was apparently quite the uproar. Though she was disposed of, it caused the Lady Ros of prior generations quite a bit of anguish.”

“Disposed of… I see.”

“Of course, if she was one to give up after a single failure, she would not have pursued immortality to begin with. Reflecting upon her failure, the Witch’s next thought was perhaps the net volume of the soul could be modified.”

“Takes one hell of a soul to come up with that!”

In other words, the idea was nothing short of compressing the data before transfer. Subaru could understand because he had a passing familiarity with computers and the concept of moving amounts of data around, but Echidna was quite something to arrive at the same idea without that knowledge and apply it to the soul at that.

“But it sounds like…that failed, too.”

“It did not. The Witch did not make it in time. The Witch of Jealousy swallowed her up before she could do so.”

After the last of that statement, of how the great hope harbored by Echidna the Witch had gone to waste, she let out a distinct sigh.

Subaru, too, knew how the six Witches bearing the titles of the other Deadly Sins had met their end. Already destroyed by the seventh Witch, the Witches in the false, transient encounters within the castle of dreams were nothing more than vestiges of their souls.

Or perhaps remaining in soul form alone was simply a matter of Echidna’s stubbornness.

“So Roswaal’s family has been administering the Sanctuary since Echidna passed away. Ryuzu, can I assume…you live here for the same reason?”

“It is so where Young Ros is concerned, but I live here because I am bound by the pact.”

The word pact brought a dramatic rise from Subaru’s eyebrows. He didn’t have any good memories of that or similar words since arriving in that world: pact, vow, covenant—the whole bunch.

Not noticing the state Subaru was in, Ryuzu made a very deep sigh.

“As the replicas go, I was one of the first four. I was granted the knowledge and personality required to administer the Sanctuary as the number of replicas continue to increase. That duty continues even now.”

“So you were given a personality and a role from the time you were born?”

“My quirks come from my upbringing after the fact, but it was quite a hardship at first. I had a duty, yet I had no memory. Many years would pass before I could truly appreciate living each and every day.”

Somehow, her words had a pained echo to them, no doubt from thinking of the months and years that had passed to date.

Only Ryuzu could know the hardships she had faced on the long road she had walked. It had been four centuries since Echidna’s death—it was a span of time that Subaru couldn’t even begin to imagine.

“I am grateful for your consideration, but you need not wear that painful look. I believe there is deep meaning behind the duty I fulfill. Their circumstances are varied, but because I was here, I was able to save a great many brethren. Maintaining this place has tangible meaning.”

These words spoken, Ryuzu smiled, and Subaru felt pressure inside of his chest.

By brethren she had saved, she meant the demi-human people living in the Sanctuary had been exposed to bias and discrimination, unable to stay in any one place for long. Whatever the Witch’s intentions, this had become a place of peace to them, a homeland they had attained at long last.

—But several days hence, even that land where they could live in peace would be cruelly eaten apart by the fangs of demon beasts.

“”

He had to do something. That was something Subaru and only Subaru could do.

For if Subaru didn’t do it, a great many lives that he had to save would be lost.

“I believe we have finally spoken about all there was to speak of. It became a longer conversation than I had expected.”

“There just isn’t enough time at all to hear about all the hard times you’ve been through, Ryuzu… Er, actually, I haven’t heard anything about the really important part yet.”

As Ryuzu took another sip of her now-cooled tea, Subaru raised a finger.

The final question was actually the first, the issue to which the answer had been kicked down the road.

“The conversation flew away a little so I forgot, but can you tell me about this Apostle of Greed business?”

“Ahhh, that’s right. It is something I took so much for granted, I failed to realize.”

“Please. If I don’t understand that, I won’t be able to relax ’cause I won’t know the reason this girl’s acting so fond of me.”

Glancing sidelong at Piko, she remained wordless and unreactive from beginning to end, never leaving Subaru’s side. —And that term, the Apostles of Greed, was the answer.

“Answer me, Ryuzu. No need to gloss anything over. Just tell it like it is.”

“Let me see… Put simply, the Apostles of Greed are the beings who have the right to command us, the replicas of Ryuzu Meyer. As fellow pawns of the Witch Echidna, our positions are similar…but your authority places you above us, Young Su.”

“Wait, wait, wait! I can’t let that part just slide! Whaddaya mean Echidna’s pawn?!”

“—? It is strange that you are unaware of it. The fact that you stand before the magic crystal is proof you have been acknowledged as being qualified to do so.”

Cocking her head, Ryuzu looked genuinely mystified. Her reaction left Subaru opening and closing his mouth like a fish. Calming down after several seconds like that, he spoke up again.

“…Explain it to me from the beginning. I found that place relying on the memories of other people. That’s why I can’t agree with what you’re telling me. I don’t have anything to do with the Witch…with Echidna.”

Fearful of breaking the taboo, Subaru became selective about his words midway through his sentence. The explanation sent Ryuzu sinking into thought, her childish brow creasing as she made an mmm murmur.

“And yet, I feel compulsive power from Young Su’s words. This is unshakable proof that you have become an apostle, Young Su. At the tomb, did you not receive something from the Witch that acknowledged you as her apostle?”

“Something I got from Echidna at the tomb…?”

Thinking back to his passing encounter with Echidna, he couldn’t put his finger on anything that fit the bill.

He had no memory whatsoever of words acknowledging him as an apostle nor of any kind of appointment ceremony. What Subaru was granted in that dream was a fair bit of knowledge and reassuring and terrifying experiences. And—

“…Wait, don’t tell me it was the Dona Tea?”

“Dona Tea?”

“Twice the Witch made me drink what she said were her body fluids disguised as tea…”

“So you took a portion of the Witch into you, then? Without humor or irony, ’tis surely that.”

“Why, that little— She really did make me drink one hell of a thing!!”

As the indignant Subaru unwittingly rose to his feet, Ryuzu went, “Now, now,” as she chided him. While Subaru’s heart and head filled with anger, she smiled at him.

“When all is said and done, it’s thanks to that you’ve come this far. It’s not all bad, yes?”

“I’m upset that she set me up and kept quiet about it! What does she think someone’s body is? My relations with Witches are complicated as it is, and now I’ve got Greed and Jealousy all over me…”

First was the Witch of Jealousy, granting Subaru the power of Return by Death without asking; then there was the Witch of Greed, arbitrarily adding him to the ranks of her apostles. Witches really did do things as they damn well pleased.

The instant he also thought of Wrath, Pride, and Gluttony, he was assailed by resignation.

“I mean I knew that… Witches do as they please. I can’t really expect much from the last two, either…”

“At any rate, Young Su, you have gained command over the Sanctuary’s replicas of Ryuzu Meyer. You may make even me obey any order you please. Quite thrilling for a healthy young man, is it not?”

“I might be a grown young man, but you don’t exactly look like a grown young woman…”

Those with particular…tastes might drooled at such an opportunity, but it was a treasure wasted on Subaru. Still, when it came to taking advantage of it, this treasure was certainly a useful one for fulfilling Subaru’s objective.

“—If I have the mark of an apostle with command rights, there’s an Apostle of Greed besides me here in the Sanctuary, right?”

The question made Ryuzu fall silent. However, her expression told him what wanted to know. More than anything, Subaru had already seen the answer with his very own eyes—the apostle who had given orders to over twenty Ryuzu replicas, employing them in the battle against the Witch.

“Garfiel. He has to have qualifications as an Apostle of Greed, too. And if my guess is right, qualifications to be an apostle aren’t something you get unless you meet with Echidna.”

And with the Witch having already passed away, that world had only one remaining way to meet her.

“Garfiel’s been inside the tomb. He’s taken the Trial… Ryuzu, you said yourself that anyone can take it. That’s gotta be why he’s an apostle.”

It wasn’t difficult to imagine Garfiel challenging the tomb. He’d probably raced recklessly into the tomb, full of confidence and spirits high, hoping to liberate the Sanctuary.

—And there, Garfiel had no doubt faced his own past.

Subaru didn’t know what Garfiel thought of the results. But given the fact that the Sanctuary’s barrier had not been lifted, Garfiel’s challenge of the Trial must have ended in failure.

And yet, he had become an apostle. After taking the Trial, he must have been invited into the castle of dreams. There he engaged in conversation with Echidna, and then they must have formed some kind of pact. Exactly what kind of pact had been exchanged between them?

Reasoning by analogy, Garfiel’s objectives all fit the role of a guardian of the Sanctuary. That was the only point on which there had been no inconsistency between all the runs Subaru had been through so far.

However, once that was removed from the picture, inconsistencies in his words and deeds had appeared between each attempt. Perhaps, for whatever reason, Garfiel’s actions had begun to go haywire? Did that have something to do with him being an apostle—no, that was overthinking it.

He couldn’t get overly sympathetic for Garfiel. He didn’t have the leeway for that.

He, Garfiel, is my enemy. —It’s better that way.

“Ryuzu, are command rights broadcasted to other apostles?”

“There is no outward sign of it, so no. We might feel the compulsive power ourselves, but surely Young Gar would feel nothing of that. Nor do I intend to go out of my way to tell him of it.”

“Then let me bind you on that one thing. Even if Garfiel asks, don’t answer him.”

“”

Subaru’s command made Ryuzu narrow her eyes. He felt an odd throbbing in his chest. Belatedly, he realized that this was a sense of guilt—of having ignored the will of another being and his aversion to forcing another to obey him.

It wasn’t something he wanted to get used to. But this one time, he ignored those feelings.

“I can’t tell you all the details, but this is the best road for everyone to travel. Ryuzu, my relationship to you girls is secret. Piko and the others can just do the same things they’ve always done… To make sure Garfiel doesn’t know there’s anything between us.”

“After all, Young Gar would not be silent if he knew that our relationship was one of adulterer and harem.”

“On top of being one evil metaphor, that makes my sins sound waaaay too dark…”

Be it sarcasm or complaint, Ryuzu’s reply left Subaru drained of energy as he gravely accepted it.

—Don’t forget. Remember this. Even if you get a pardon, even if this becomes a lost world…

—The crimes committed by Subaru Natsuki had to be remembered, even if by Subaru Natsuki alone.

“Young Su?”

“…Nah, this is a really huge help. For the moment, I’m good for everything I wanted to ask. I figure I’ll be asking for your cooperation from here on out, so counting on you for when that time comes.”

“Of course, for I cannot defy you. Use me as you please, be it to evade Young Gar or as your own personal hugging pillow…”

“And can you stop treating me like my demands aren’t greedy enough?! I’m really not used to it!”

Responding to Ryuzu’s teasing, Subaru proceeded to give a command to Piko at his side. For several seconds, he mulled over what he ought to say, but—

“Please continue working as the eyes of the Sanctuary just like you have to date. I’ll call you when I need you.”

“”

Having received her command, Piko did not nod as she quickly rose up, heading out of the house in a small run.

“When I wanna talk to you in secret, Ryuzu, should I just use this hideaway?”

“Yes, for this is where I am sleeping while I lend my house to Young Ros and the others. I am here most of the time between morning and night. A house without a master is slighted if one does not use it once in a while, after all.”

When Ryuzu slapped her thighs, Subaru nodded a fair bit and lightly surveyed the room. He’d thought this when they’d first brought him in, too, but this really was an average house with no defining characteristics.

But if he was to point out one thing that made it stand out from the other house, it would be the two shields on the wall—both spherical and polished a silver color, decorated with images as if to powerfully assert themselves.

“They are the toys that Young Gar and Frederica played with long ago.”

“…Children playing with shields. Different culture, huh?”

Seeing in which direction Subaru’s gaze faced, Ryuzu made a pained smile as she spoke. It was hard for Subaru to imagine the sight of kids playing with shields. It was just as difficult to imagine Garfiel and Frederica as little kids.

“Thank you, Ryuzu. See you later… Er, that wasn’t a command, okay?”

“I will not be quite that much of a tease. Worry not. As representative of the Sanctuary, I shall cooperate with you hereafter.”

The oddly roundabout phrasing on the occasion of his departure made Subaru tilt his head. But unrelated to that tilting, he waved a hand and headed out of the house.

And just before actually leaving, Subaru abruptly looked back.

“Come to think of it, Ryuzu, if the original family name is Meyer, why is your family name Bilma? Where’d that come from?”

The question made Ryuzu, watching him head off, flash a wry smile.

Somehow, that expression was incredibly fleeting smile, like something so fragile that would crumple if you put your finger on it.

“The name of Ryuzu is assigned as part of our role. Accordingly, we can only demonstrate our individuality in other places. Hobbies, tastes, and names… Ah, Young Su.”

“…Yeah?”

“If you do not mind, perhaps you could ask the same question to me again? —From tomorrow and thereafter.”

Subaru was silent in the face of Ryuzu’s request as that fleeting, brittle smile crossed her face.

However, it did not take very much time for him to agree to her earnest plea.

Sub-chapter 6.

Parting with Ryuzu, Subaru walked to the settlement in the dead of night.

Ahead of him lay the Cathedral—the place where the fleeing people of Earlham Village had been given refuge and the place that served as Subaru’s sleeping place. Most were simply dozing in a huddle, but the villagers did as they were told without complaint, and that courageous spirit greatly bolstered Subaru’s willpower.

“Somehow, I’ve gotta get everyone to the village safe and sound…”

As Suburu murmured, in the back of his mind, the smiling faces of people familiar to him were dyed with blood in an instant. The sights of them being cruelly slain by claw and fang—that came from a future that might not be long in coming.

Be the culprit Garfiel or the Great Rabbit, the difference in the form of death offered no salvation.

But if it was just a matter of liberating the villagers from the Sanctuary, Subaru had a way. He merely needed to ask that they be released on the firm promise that Emilia would undertake the Trial. They wouldn’t refuse.

“Besides, if they’re here…they might do something reckless again.”

On a previous run, the villagers had metaphorically broken their bones to cooperate with Ram and company in aiding Subaru. Then that metaphor became far too literal with the unfolding of a tragedy far worse than the figure of speech could account for. A tragedy that could not be undone.

Subaru didn’t want to go through that again. And it was something he absolutely could not allow to repeat itself.

Accordingly, he planned to have the people of Earlham Village peaceably released from the Sanctuary. Getting Roswaal to offer such a proposal made it possible. This was an issue he’d already cleared once before.

As for what remained, the next problem he needed to deal with was—

“—Subaru? What are you doing in a place like this?”

“Wah-yaah!”

Suddenly, Subaru was taken by surprise by a voice calling out to him from out of the blue. He’d been concentrating so hard on his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed her presence whatsoever. Subaru’s reaction also seemed to surprise the girl who’d called out to him.

“That preposterous way of being surprised can really startle someone, you know?”

“N-no one uses the word ‘preposterous’ anymore…”

As the surprised girl—Emilia—pursed her lips in protest, Subaru somehow managed to respond with his usual flippancy. In response, Emilia put her hands on her hips and said, “Goodness, Subaru, that mouth of yours never quits. And to think I was worried.”

“I didn’t do anything that you had to worry about, so it’s all right… But since I’m happy that Emilia-tan was thinking about me, I’d like it if you keep me in your thoughts all the time. We could even meet in a dream.”

“Sorry, I don’t really follow.”

Quickly recovering emotionally, Subaru entrusted matters to his gilded tongue as he walked closer to Emilia.

Unlike when they had parted, Subaru noticed that Emilia, framed by the waning moonlight, was wearing thin one-piece pajamas. Without exaggeration, she bore an air of mystery like a fairy spotted on a moonlit night. Subaru felt his cheeks growing warmer at the thought.

“You look like a fairy there, Emilia-tan.”

“Ah, you mustn’t. You cannot speak badly of people like that. Even I will get upset.”

“Calling you a fairy was meant to be a compliment, though!”

“—? But fairies are a type of evil spirit, right? You can’t fool me by calling those words of praise.”

“Gah, my wooing was foiled by cultural differences…”

Emilia, refusing to lend her ears to Subaru’s excuses, puffed up her cheeks. After that, she glanced at the downcast Subaru and let out a long, exasperated sigh.

“Yes, yes, let us leave the jokes there… Subaru, what were you doing at an hour like this?”

“That’s my line. I told you not to stay up tonight, and here you are on a nighttime stroll… If Puck was here, he’d say your beauty would be going to waste.”

“That’s, er…mm, I might not actually have an excuse.”

By piling a question onto Emilia’s own, Subaru hid from her the information he had gleaned that night. She didn’t need to know about the circumstances of Ryuzu’s birth or about the Witch. It would just be an extra burden to bear.

But Emilia’s nighttime stroll bugged him on a mundane level. His question made her cast her eyes down.

“Um, having you say that to me makes this a little embarrassing, Subaru, but I couldn’t sleep at all since… So I went out for a stroll with the night breeze hitting me. It helped calm me down a little.”

“…Really are uneasy about the Trial, then?”

“It’s not that… Well, it might be that. But I don’t really understand it myself. I thought, maybe by walking around I could find out what it was. Really, if only—”

Cutting her words off there, Emilia lowered her eyelids, donning a gentle self-deprecating smile.

Even without saying them, Subaru understood the words that lay ahead of where she had cut them off. Emilia probably wanted to say this: Really, if only Puck were here.

“…I guess I’m a stand-in to the very end, huh?”

“Eh?”

“Nah. Emilia-tan… Emilia, you’re doing great. You really want to run from it, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I really respect you for not letting that keep you down and standing up to face it.”

On her one opportunity to do so, Emilia would continue her challenge, undaunted by the allure of running away. The result might still be unpalatable, but even so, Subaru saw her trying to fulfill her duty with all her might.

That was why Subaru’s words were true, no falseness to them whatsoever.

He respected Emilia, Ram, Otto, Petra, the villagers.

He thought similarly of Puck, Roswaal, Ryuzu, and Frederica.

For that sake, he had to overcome the obstacles known as Garfiel, Elsa, the Beast Master, and the Great Rabbit.

“Wh-what’s with you all of a sudden? You saying that out of the blue…it’s startling.”

“It’s not all of a sudden. I always think that; I’m just taking the time to say it. I wish I could say it in a more romantic way, but I guess you’ll have to settle for a moonlit night.”

Hearing Subaru’s words made Emilia furiously blink her violet eyes. Smiling at the sight, Subaru spread his arms wide as if trying to hug the night sky itself.

“I don’t know how much strength my words’ll have, but I’m saying it ’cause I feel like it. Emilia, you’ll be all right. I’m sure you can do it. I’m here for you.”

“Subaru…”

“My words might not be much compared to the real deal, but if playing the role helps, great.”

He truly did not know how much his words could support her in the stead of what she truly wanted to hear from her family. Even so, Subaru’s words made Emilia give the crystal lying against her chest a squeeze.

“…Mm, thank you. That really gave me the courage I need. Really.”

“So I managed to help Emilia-tan a little bit?”

“Don’t say weird things like ‘a little bit.’ Subaru, you’ve always been helping me… Even today, I failed, and still you…”

“But tomorrow’ll probably be different. You’ll make sure of it, right?”

In the face of Subaru closing one eye in a wink, Emilia closed her eyes and let out her breath. Then, after Emilia maintained her silence for several seconds, she nodded.

“—Yeah, I’ll do my best. Cheer me on, okay?”

“You know I will.”

Subaru responded to Emilia’s soft smile by baring his teeth and giving a thumbs-up.

The response deepened Emilia’s smile, and after a little bit of mutual laughter, the pair walked toward the settlement. After a bit of quiet time together, they came to a fork in the road.

This was where they would part for that night—Subaru going left to the Cathedral, Emilia going right to the Ryuzu residence.

“Well, you’d better get some sleep this time, Emilia-tan. Any loss of your beauty is a loss for the world.”

“That way of talking is a lot like Puck. You too, Subaru. You won’t get taller if you keep staying up at night.”

“I’m at the end of my growth period anyway, so you don’t need to worry about that…!”

With a bitter smile on him, the pair waved as they parted ways then and there. He truly wanted to escort Emilia all the way, but it was unclear just how long Ram’s sabotage keeping Garfiel tied down would last. Blithely running into Garfiel would only be trouble, so with great regret, he abandoned the role of the wolf in gentleman’s clothing.

—Besides, if he was together with Emilia any further, his resolve would be dulled.

“…Looks like everyone’s fast asleep, huh?”

Passing along the nighttime path to bring the Cathedral in sight, Subaru cautiously stepped inside.

The interior of the building had a large hall reminiscent of a place of worship with only candles to illuminate it, and the villagers’ sleeping breaths arose from a communal space. Most of those sleeping in the open space were the village’s menfolk. The women and children and the elderly were sleeping in rooms too frugal to be properly called bedrooms, but they were the closest thing under the circumstances.

Rather than complain about their accommodation, they acted to make the best of it. Subaru greatly admired their ability to do so. He did feel apologetic toward the several traveling merchants wrapped up in similar circumstances.

“That’s why I can’t let them treat me as more special than they are…”

Paying consideration to those asleep, Subaru meticulously made his way to the back of the hall. There lay the space kept open for Subaru, which at first the villagers had kindly furnished with not only a rug and a blanket but also the immense luxury of a pillow.

That was something he just could not allow, so he’d firmly refused in favor of sleeping accommodations like everyone else’s.

“—So you’re back, Mr. Natsuki?”

“Ew, ew, sorry, did I wake y—? Doesn’t seem like it.”

Looking back toward the quiet voice, in the sleeping space immediately beside him was a plump bla— Correction, Otto with a blanket pulled over him. Under the blanket, he was relying on a lagnite ore’s light to read a book.

“I was worried that you were so late in returning. I feared you might have carelessly gotten lost in the forest and fallen into distress.”

“Like hell I would… Wait, don’t tell me you were waiting for me to come back?”

“I will not for I did not. I am merely adjusting the calculations for how much the merchants here with me need to demand from the Marquis for compensation for the loss of business during our time here. Though as it has taken quite a bit more time than I had thought, I was thinking I should finally get some sleep.”

As he spoke, Otto closed the book in his hands and returned the luminous ore to its leather pouch. This made the light even more meager, and the expression on his face grew less distinct as well.

But even without being able to see his face, Subaru could manage to see through such a clumsy lie regardless.

“What are you, an overprotective mother…?”

“At least make me out to be the male parent… Er, I actually have no idea what you are referring to.”

After trying to gloss things over in various ways, Otto curled up in the blanket and turned his back toward Subaru. Maybe he thought he’d be found out if he said any more. His thinking he hadn’t already been found out was kind of pathetic.

Sighing at the sight of his back, Subaru lay on the rug of his own sleeping space. Pulling the blanket up to chest level, he felt sleepiness close at hand, contrary to expectations.

He had no intention of sleeping for particularly long. Even so, his body apparently craved sleep more than he had appreciated.

“Mr. Natsuki, I believe this is very forward of me on various levels, but if anything happens, I am here to listen.”

“…This guy says some weird stuff in his sleep. Gives me the creeps…”

“Is that the kind of reply to give to someone worried about you?!”

Riding his emotions and raising his voice, Otto looked like he was immediately covering his mouth with his own hands. Fortunately, there was no sign of the sleep around them being disrupted by that single blow.

“Behave and go to sleep. If the villagers explode because of your jabs, there’ll be no stopping it.”

“Um, I was not saying that as a joke…”

“I know, I know. I know already. —And that’s why I can’t tell you.”

The latter half alone was a murmur that seemed to vanish inside of his mouth.

After that, Otto fell into silence, apparently dissatisfied with Subaru’s lack of further words. He soon lost his battle against sleep. Subaru heartily sighed as he sensed that from Otto.

He did not doubt Otto’s offer in any way. If Subaru asked, no doubt Otto would cooperate. He really was far too good to other people to be cut out as a merchant.

He’d seen that benevolence for his fellow man get him killed. That was why he absolutely wouldn’t ask the man for help.

He wouldn’t have Emilia or Otto or the people of Earlham Village save him.

Subaru would wager his own life and save them all.

Sub-chapter 7.

After several hours of sleep at the Cathedral, Subaru was there when daybreak came to greet the Sanctuary.

Shaking his still-sleepy head, Subaru spurred his mind to awaken. Even that short sleep had somewhat softened the fatigue of brain and body. At the very least, he did not need to worry about falling off a dragon in the near future.

“Well, in the end, I’m relying on your running technique to help with that part.”

This said, Subaru stretched a hand out to his favorite pitch-black land dragon—Patlash—standing right beside him. Upon this, their first reunion since the day before, Patlash fondly brought the tip of her nose over to Subaru. Making a little smile at the adorable gesture, he savored the ticklish feeling and stroked her head.

“I know I’m waking you up like this, but I’m counting on you to get the job done. —It’ll be one run all the way to the mansion.”

Patlash responded to Subaru’s request with a sound from her throat. It sounded to Subaru’s ears like, It can’t be helped, leaving him very grateful for the depth of his beloved dragon’s fondness.

—Very early in the morning, away from prying eyes, Subaru was trying to leave the Sanctuary.

His objective was to take on affairs at Roswaal Manor, for prioritizing that over the tomb was the plan Subaru had decided on that time around.

In complete secrecy, his aim was to get a grip on the situation arising at the mansion, develop firm countermeasures, and return. In the present circumstances, Subaru remained far more ignorant of the events set to occur at the mansion than the situation in the Sanctuary.

He couldn’t save anyone like that. Accordingly, he would proceed to the mansion to learn about those things. Besides—

“If I know the circumstances, I can rely on Echidna, too. Right now, I still don’t have enough data to hold a conversation.”

He could lament his ignorance and powerlessness after he had acted. Subaru didn’t deserve to have such laments yet.

His preparations were insufficient for conversing with the Witch. But that did not mean he was without hope.

“Beatrice, isn’t part of the Witch Cult… That I know for sure.”

This was something Roswaal had spoken to Subaru about during the go-around before last.

Roswaal had declared that the book in Beatrice’s hands was an inferior version of what might otherwise be called a book of knowledge, but that book had nothing to do with the Witch Cult. If Beatrice was unrelated to the Cult, she was not his enemy. He could save Beatrice.

That, to Subaru, was hope. Of course, there were many unnatural aspects to Beatrice’s demeanor toward him. But the biggest issue had been held at bay. For the moment, that was enough.

“If there’s a way to save Beatrice and then Rem and Petra ’n’ Frederica, that clears the mansion side.”

Touching the handkerchief wrapped around his wrist, Subaru crisply put his objective into words.

If he knew how to deal with the issues at the mansion, he could pour all his efforts into taking on the tomb and liberating the Sanctuary. If there were firm ways to take on both sides, he ought to be able to break through even those twin towers of suffering.

Just how many times Subaru might have to sacrifice himself for that end was an unknown variable, but—

“—That’s the only value I have here.”

Flicking a finger off his own forehead, Subaru put his own resolve into words, carving them into his chest.

This time, his return to the mansion was the morning of the second day, the fastest timing yet. He’d beat out last time’s speed record and return to the mansion, spurring Petra and the others to evacuate. Everything would begin with that.

Before he set off, Subaru dealt with his one lingering regret—sliding a letter under the door into the entrance to the Ryuzu residence. The contents were addressed to Emilia, expressing on paper his desire that she not worry about him.

“Not that this makes any logical sense, since my premise is that I’m redoing this world…”

This time, Subaru wasn’t telling anyone in the Sanctuary about his return to the mansion. All he’d done was write that letter, an effort to inform Emilia and those immediately around her.

He’d firmly cut down the possibilities of liberating the villagers and taking Ram and Otto with him. This time, Subaru would return to the mansion alone. What he needed to guard against the consequences of that surely had a very simple answer.

Leaving the letter behind even so was to guard against unnecessary accidents. If Subaru clouded the reason for his sudden absence, at a minimum he could avoid chaos in the Sanctuary. He wanted to avoid an undesirable change occurring to the greatest possible extent, passing it off as his running some kind of errand to the mansion and so forth. —That was his ostensible reason, at least.

When you ripped that facade away, his real reason was terribly simplistic. He didn’t want to make Emilia sad. That was all.

Even in a land fated to vanish in a world fated to be erased, Subaru did not want to make Emilia sad. For that reason alone, Subaru left a letter behind.

Truly, the best thing would be for Subaru to stay. Her smiling face from the previous night rose into the back of his mind.

“—Let’s go, Patlash. Sorry to make you wait.”

Shaking his head, Subaru severed himself from lingering regret as he mounted Patlash. When he gripped the reins and spoke to her, Patlash made a little sound, turning her head to the way out of the Sanctuary.

Her running feet already had the blessing of wind repel deployed around them, so that Subaru felt neither the sway of the land dragon nor the resistance of the wind. At a speed outstripping the wind itself, Patlash raced through the forest at daybreak.

Even the Lost Woods of Cremaldi was all for naught before this all-too-clever land dragon. She continued her sprint with no sign of getting lost in the Lost Woods. At that rate, they’d get out of the forest in another hour—

“—Aww, too bad. It’s just like the story o’ one should be suspicious of Berbe’s different sweat.”

When the voice poured down from overhead, Subaru instantly pulled back the reins.

Receiving this command, Patlash kicked up a cloud of dust as she slammed the brakes. With the land dragon standing at a halt, her wariness toward the figure standing straight before her as one of the guardian deva kings was laid bare by her neigh.

But if anything, the opponent bared his fangs in amusement at the hostility.

“Ha! Ain’t you all worked up early in the mornin’. That land dragon has some serious guts, don’t she?”

“…That’s because, aside from her tastes in men, Patlash is a completely perfect lady.”

“Real adorable of her. —Unlike your land dragon, you’re nothin’ but a stupid bastard, though.”

Ferocious vigor poured out, and from a single step on the ground, Subaru felt as if the forest itself was being shaken. Such was the oppressive feeling that the youth who had shown himself—Garfiel—was thrusting in his direction.

The prickly sense of oppression made Subaru swallow his saliva as he raised both of his hands up.

“…There’s a misunderstanding between me and you. I think that’s something I need to clear up.”

“Misunderstanding…? Like hell there is. You’re runnin’ away in the middle o’ the night with your tail curled between your legs. That’s the small of heart for ya. ’Cause if it ain’t that…”

On that note, Garfiel audibly clamped his fangs down, a distinct grimace appearing as he said, “—Then that just leaves a guy stinkin’ of the Witch headin’ out to do wicked deeds, am I right?”

Crinkling his nose, he spat the words out, making his hostility clear.

What he had said made Subaru close his eyes for a moment; then he stroked the agitated Patlash’s neck, dismounting so that he would stand at the same eye level as Garfiel. He sighed at confirmation that the Witch’s stench—the miasma clinging to his body—was indeed the cause of Garfiel’s antagonism toward him. However, he simultaneously felt that something was a little off.

Amid that vagueness, Subaru formed words for the purpose of giving that amorphous ill feeling a tangible form.

“Just now, you mentioned the Witch’s stench, but I’ve had a fair number of people point that out to me before.”

“…Heh, that so? I dunno about what other people think. It’s one helluva stench, though.”

“Setting my body odor aside, those people decided based on my actions. It’d be a big help if you did the same. At the very least, you let me go right after I came out of the tomb, right?”

“”

Seeing Garfiel go silent made the bad feeling that had been bothering Subaru grow more distinct.

Simply put, the timing with which Garfiel pointed the miasma out was unsettling. Why had he chosen this moment rather than right after he’d come out of the tomb? Of course, it was possible that when he’d noticed Subaru acting away from prying eyes, he’d linked that to his suspicions about the miasma, giving him justification to be hostile—

“—If that’s the case, just say the word and I’ll give you a sincere and honest apology from the bottom of my heart.”

“”

When Garfiel heard Subaru’s question, his mood clearly shifted. At his back, Patlash gave off a slight growl, perhaps the work of a land dragon’s acute sense for danger.

Even without such instincts, Subaru could tell that Garfiel’s annoyance was at dangerously high levels.

“I asked something inconvenient for you. That’s written all over your face, Garfiel.”

“…Stop it. Don’t annoy me any more than ya have.”

“No can do. This is your reward for getting in my way. If you hadn’t shown up, I’d have let it go, but since you did show up, I’m taking the opportunity. —Garfiel, your face will give me my answer.”

Garfiel’s voice grew quieter; in its place, the ghastliness residing in his expression grew hotter still. Keeping his eye on that, Subaru raised three fingers. And then—

“I have three guesses for what’s put you in a sour mood. The first is the miasma…but I have my suspicions about that. If your nose is for real, I can’t square it with your actions yesterday.”

He started by raising his doubts concerning the miasma. Garfiel’s cheek twitched slightly.

“The second is you spotting me as I ran out this morning. It’s true that was wildly suspicious…but that’s weird, too. Unless you’ve been tailing me the whole time, it’s like you have someone else keeping an eye on me.”

His next shot was a bluff, since he’d already heard as much from Ryuzu. Garfiel’s pupils narrowed.

“The third and final guess is what links the first and the second together. It’s the girl who looks just like Ryuzu that I saw in the forest. That girl—oof.”

With the third assertion, he had clearly succeeded in getting under Garfiel’s skin—something that became obvious when the world Subaru saw was suddenly flipping upside down when he was only midway through his sentence.

“—Gwaa!!”

The next moment, his back was slammed against something hard, wringing out an anguished groan along with all the air from his lungs.

He felt something extremely hard pressing against his back—which turned out to be a fat tree trunk. The palm digging into the center of his abdomen was holding him so far up against the tree that his feet didn’t even reach the ground.

As Subaru moaned in pain, the culprit, Garfiel, glared at him from up close and said, “—And where the hell did you see that?”

“Whaddaya mean where…? Inside, the forest…was right there for the seeing.”

“Ain’t no way ya could have been there. Stop tryin’ to fool me if ya don’t wanna end up squished flat.”

An audible creak accompanied the increase in pressure, causing drool to spill out as Subaru writhed in agony at the churning his internal organs were going through. Twist as he might, he couldn’t even make Garfiel’s hand twitch.

“Don’t move a muscle, land dragon. You do and I’ll crush your precious master.”

Garfiel moved to check Patlash, who was about to make a move to rescue Subaru from his suffering. The land dragon snarled in frustration, lowering her center of gravity as if waiting for an opening.

Upon reflection, these two foul-tempered personalities—one man and one beast—had been at odds ever since their first meeting. This explained why Garfiel had been the cause of Patlash’s death during a previous run.

Of course, neither of the two concerned knew anything about that—and when Subaru thought about it, he felt his agony ease somewhat.

“…The hell’s…wrong with you? Why are you smilin’ at a time like this?”

“S…orry, just…remembered something… Made me laugh…”

“—You’re off your rocker, damn it.”

“Whoa?! The heck are you…?”

With a low murmur, Garfiel suddenly let Subaru go. Unable to break his fall, Subaru tumbled to the ground, immediately glaring at Garfiel as he wondered what the big idea was—and then he realized it.

Resting in Garfiel’s eyes was disgust—and a faint trace of fear.

“Garfiel, you’re…”

“Shaddap, madman. This ain’t funny. Damn it, you were testin’ me, weren’t ya?”

“”

Pressed into silence, Subaru touched a hand to his throat as he let out a light cough. He sensed Patlash rushing right over to his side; during that time, Garfiel moved a fair ways back.

“You knew ya might be killed then and there, damn it. This ain’t no joke. How can ya can smile when your own life is on the line? Ya lost your mind!”

“When you put it like that, it’s kinda hurtful, you know… I’m not exactly calm and composed here.”

Smiling weakly at Garfiel’s statement, Subaru scratched his head.

On one level, what he’d said was correct; on another, it was not. Fact was, Subaru’s hands were shaking, and his stomach hadn’t stopped crying out from convulsion-like pains. Mistaking his demeanor for composure was a considerable misreading.

But it was also a fact that he’d intentionally provoked Garfiel fully knowing it put his life at risk.

—After all, he had to be certain of what drove Garfiel to anger, what was making him explode.

This was an investigation Subaru had purportedly kicked down the road when he previously decided to prioritize the mansion. But it wasn’t a move he would refuse to play if granted a golden opportunity. There was no denying that his life had been in danger as a result, but—

“—If my life’s payment enough, I’ll use it to get the results I want.”

If the only sacrifice that needed to be paid was in Subaru’s heart, he might as well buy something worthwhile with it. If he could cheaply obtain a piece of the puzzle that eventually led to an optimal conclusion, he’d risk his life as many times as it took.

No doubt his determination had been conveyed to Garfiel. Looking revolted from the bottom of his heart, his teeth groaned as he spat a reply.

“I know a bastard who has the same eyes as you do. Me, I hate his guts. Hell, I should crush your head right now while I have the chance.”

“I think that’d end up being a problem for both of us. If possible, I’d like you to let me go with a generous heart.”

“What proof do I have that lettin’ ya go here won’t be bad for us lat—”

“—I won’t betray Emilia. I won’t do anything that’ll harm the Sanctuary, either. Believe me.”

Brushing dirt off his body, Subaru declared his innocence to Garfiel’s suspicious heart.

This was a gamble. If Garfiel suppressed his hesitation and decided to eliminate Subaru then and there, his life could be forfeit at any moment. But from Subaru’s point of view, there was still time before that moment arrived.

“”

Garfiel was unsure what to do. There was no doubt that if Subaru crossed the line, Garfiel’s fangs would mercilessly fall upon him. But this time, he hadn’t crossed that threshold yet.

Accordingly, Garfiel was at a loss as to whether he should put away his fangs and his claws or not—

“—So you’re letting me go. Fine if that’s how I take this?”

“Don’t get cocky. Get lost before I change my mind.”

Lowering his arms, Garfiel spat out his decision as he moved to the side, seemingly yielding the path to Subaru. His demeanor brought a low growl from Patlash, but Subaru held out a palm to stop her.

Some might say that he had both won the gamble and lost. Either way, this time he’d apparently managed not to cross the line with Garfiel.

“Now that you’re letting me go, mind answering my third question from earlier?”

“I said don’t get cocky. Geluugel does not forgive twice, damn it.”

“That so. Guess it was too much to ask for, then.”

That sour reply made Subaru’s shoulders sink as he promptly backed off. Subaru proceeded to mount Patlash as Garfiel kept regarding him with suspicion.

“You don’t wanna talk. I have no way of forcing you to talk. Betting on tears to sway you has bad odds, so I won’t push it this time. I’m saving you for later.”

“This time…? Later…? What the hell are ya talkin’ ab—?”

“Don’t act all mystified, Garfiel. I know you’re hiding something. But I’m going to expose it. That’s an absolute certainty. Because that’s what needs to be done.”

Subaru’s plainspoken announcement made Garfiel open his eyes wide. His gaze met with Subaru’s. However, this time Subaru was not afraid of that sharp stare.

The power behind Subaru’s and Garfiel’s eyes as well as the pair’s standpoints had been reversed. Garfiel ought to have been overwhelming with his clear advantage in brute force, but he was being held in check by Subaru’s bottomless determination.

As if refusing to admit what was happening, Garfiel clacked his fangs once more.

“…Shut up. If I silence you right here, right now, then that ‘absolute certainty’ goes poof, too.”

“Sorry, but this won’t change. As long as I don’t give up, the moment I know someone’s hiding a secret, it’s not a secret anymore. If you’re gonna blame something, blame your carelessness.”

Garfiel, not knowing the meaning behind the cumulative weight of Subaru’s words, was beset by total confusion. He had no way of knowing the meaning of Subaru’s choice of the word “carelessness,” because it wasn’t him, but another Garfiel from a previous time that was responsible. And this was both a future him and a him that already was destined never to arrive.

—They were looking at different realities. They were seeing different numbers of possibilities. That was what separated them.

“Do you still want to try and stop me, Garfiel?”

“I—I…”

“If you do, all it’s gonna accomplish is waste time. It’d be helpful if you don’t anymore.”

If Subaru lost his life at this very moment, he’d have to restart from last night in the tomb. Re-creating the exact same conditions to make sure he reached the same point again would be back-breaking work. —Not that he couldn’t do it.

“Damn it…curse you! Why are you here?! What are you trying to do to us?!”

If he didn’t plan on stopping them, then Subaru was just about ready to order Patlash to go right around him. Garfiel’s voice, which sounded pathetic as it echoed through the forest, made Subaru sigh deeply.

“I told you my objective is to save Emilia. I don’t have any intention of doing harm to the Sanctuary… I’m not trying to do anything to you and your people.”

Far from hurting anyone, Subaru’s only goal was but to extend a helping hand.

First and foremost, he was thinking of Emilia and company of course, but it applied to Ryuzu and the residents of the Sanctuary, too. He had no qualms about adding Garfiel to the list. Just—

“—In the time before I get there, I’ll probably make you hate me a few times more. Let me apologize in advance for that. Really, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t get it, I don’t get it, I don’t get it, I don’t get it… I don’t get it!”

Garfiel rejected everything he could not understand. Subaru was intimately familiar with that behavior. If only I could make him understand somehow, he thought. But he acted the way he did because he didn’t think that was possible.

When Subaru emitted a sigh heavily laden with resignation, it sparked Garfiel’s indignation and made him explode—

“The hell do ya think you are, lookin’ down on us?! Who the hell asked you to do anything?! It’s none of your… You don’t know anythin’ about this place, anythin’ about the old hags; you don’t know nothin’!!”

“I know I don’t know. Actually, it’s precisely because of that thought that I’m doing this.”

“Whaddaya think ya can do just scratchin’ the surface and coming around with nothin’ but pretty words?! Smilin’ all frivolous, talkin’ only about stuff like it’s a dream, foolin’ people with words to make ’em comfortable—you’re nothin’ but a charlatan son of a bitch!”

“”

“Someone who ain’t known pain and ain’t known suffering shouldn’t run his mouth like he understands!!”

Unable to tear down Subaru’s knowing face, Garfiel remained indignant as he shouted.

Garfiel’s jeer was swallowed up by the far reaches of the daybreak sky. Faced with the distant echo of those bladelike words, Subaru gripped his reins. Patlash changed direction and began to walk.

Leaving Garfiel behind, Subaru turned his back to the Sanctuary to look ahead toward the forest’s exterior.

—Garfiel had said Subaru looked down on him, pretending like he knew things, butting into things he didn’t understand.

Everything Garfiel said was true. Subaru was probably wrong about everything.

Nonetheless, he would say one thing.

“—I do know.”

“”

“I know Hell. —I’ve already seen it, over and over.”

If there was a Hell to be found here, then it must have been in many of the worlds Subaru had seen so far.

Countless times, when the end of the world arrived, Subaru had seen Hell again and again, enough to make him want to avert his gaze; it was burned into his eyes, seared into his body, and forever lodged into his mind.

That was why he said that to Garfiel.

He said it confidently, hoping to put him at ease. He left behind a smile, so that he might find some courage—

“—I’m the only one who needs to know what Hell is. That’s what I’m here for.”
 

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Diamond. Diamond. Diamond.

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